Wikipedia:Peer review/Vatican City/archive2

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Vatican City[edit]

I would like to get this article to FA or GA status. The article had another peer review in January, but it did not get that much feedback. I have made the few changes outlined in that review and am wondering if you could assit me by providing comments on the article. Thanks, Cbrown1023 talk 02:07, 24 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Simply more references-the article is very undercited for such a topic. -Fsotrain09 21:02, 24 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Most of my activity on the article has been in adding citations, I was the one who added the {{fact}} tag to the only remaining statement that needs citing. I find it disheartening that you say "More citations!" but don't even state where or if they are needed. Cbrown1023 talk 23:31, 24 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Alright. Here are specific statements that really should be cited:
  • According to the Lateran Treaty, certain properties of the Holy See that are located in Italian territory, most notably Castel Gandolfo and the Patriarchal Basilicas, enjoy extraterritorial status similar to that of foreign embassies. Probably both a citation to the Treaty and a legal analysis making the comparative judgement are necessary.
  • The Holy See has the oldest active continuous diplomatic representation or service in the world, dating back to at least AD 325 with its legation to the Council of Nicea. Any superlative statement such as this needs citation.
  • A noble class still exists today that continues to form part of the papal court drawn from the ranks of Roman and European nobility. Citations are helpful for supporting statements of partial contemporary continuity like this.
  • Therefore, within this context, the State of the Vatican City is a true, although elected, monarchy in every sense of the word. It's a statement of logical conclusion following supporting statements of fact, but building logical arguments gets into original research. Citation would avoid that.
  • Budget: Revenues (2003) 252 million USD; expenditures (2003) 264 million USD.
  • The Vatican has no official language. Because of conventional wisdom to the contrary stemming from the discussion that suceedes this, the sentence should be cited. Ditto for German is the official language of the Swiss Guard.
  • Vatican City State is a recognized national territory under international law.
  • Despite its minuscule size, as the veritable headquarters of the Catholic Church, the Vatican's influence on world affairs is disproportionately immense by virtue of its moral and spiritual authority. Original research concern here, despite the tautology.
  • ...the state has the highest per capita crime rate of any nation on earth, more than twenty times higher than that of Italy.' Difficult to determine if the citations further down in the paragraph cover this statement as well. -Fsotrain09 05:14, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]


The following suggestions were generated by a semi-automatic javascript program, and might not be applicable for the article in question.

  • Please expand the lead to conform with guidelines at Wikipedia:Lead. The article should have an appropriate number of paragraphs as is shown on WP:LEAD, and should adequately summarize the article.[?]
  • Per Wikipedia:Context and Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates), months and days of the week generally should not be linked. Years, decades, and centuries can be linked if they provide context for the article.[?]
  • See if possible if there is a free use image that can go on the top right corner of this article.[?]
  • Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (numbers), there should be a non-breaking space -   between a number and the unit of measurement. For example, instead of 4 ft, use 4 ft, which when you are editing the page, should look like: 4 ft.[?]
  • Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (numbers), please spell out source units of measurements in text; for example, the Moon is 380,000 kilometres (240,000 mi) from Earth.[?] Specifically, an example is 4 ft.
  • Per Wikipedia:Context and Wikipedia:Build the web, years with full dates should be linked; for example, link January 15, 2006.[?]
  • Please reorder/rename the last few sections to follow guidelines at Wikipedia:Guide to layout.[?]
  • Please make the spelling of English words consistent with either American or British spelling, depending upon the subject of the article. Examples include: neighbour (B) (American: neighbor), meter (A) (British: metre), metre (B) (American: meter), defense (A) (British: defence), offense (A) (British: offence), organize (A) (British: organise), recognize (A) (British: recognise), ization (A) (British: isation).
  • Watch for redundancies that make the article too wordy instead of being crisp and concise. (You may wish to try Tony1's redundancy exercises.)
    • Vague terms of size often are unnecessary and redundant - “some”, “a variety/number/majority of”, “several”, “a few”, “many”, “any”, and “all”. For example, “All pigs are pink, so we thought of a number of ways to turn them green.”
  • Please ensure that the article has gone through a thorough copyediting so that it exemplifies some of Wikipedia's best work. See also User:Tony1/How to satisfy Criterion 1a.[?]

You may wish to browse through User:AndyZ/Suggestions for further ideas. Thanks, APR t 22:16, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Review by Awadewit[edit]

This article looks pretty good. Here are my suggestions:

  • On my browser, the text of the article didn't start until the bottom of the infobox which made me think when I initially got the page that there was no article - there was just this infobox and a huge white space at the top.
  • The lead is a bit dry and should be expanded to at least try and summarize the article. WP:LEAD
  • The name "Vatican" is ancient and predates Christianity, coming from the Latin Mons Vaticanus, Vatican Hill. The territory of Vatican City is part of the Mons Vaticanus, and of the adjacent former Vatican Fields - so, is the name Roman? be as explicit as possible
  • Being separated from the city, on the west bank of the Tiber river, the area was an outcrop of the city that was protected by being included within the walls of Leo IV, and later expanded by the current fortification walls of Paul III/Pius IV/Urban VIII. - the "beings" are awakward - reword
  • The article is vastly undercited. If you want to go for FA, you will need many more citations. They seem to have a rule of thumb over there of at least one citation per paragraph. It is better to overcite than undercite - then you don't get into any tiffs with the reviewers. Besides, it makes wikipedia look better to the outside world and readers are given more sources to go to when they want more information.
  • Even before the arrival of Christianity, it is supposed that this originally uninhabited part of Rome (the ager vaticanus) had long been considered sacred, or at least not available for habitation. The area was also the site of worship to the Phrygian goddess Cybele and her consort Attis during Roman times. - move "during Roman times" to the beginning so that the reader knows when you are talking about
  • define "circus" - modern readers will think "Barnum and Bailey"
  • Shouldn't the territory illustration be next to the "Territory" section?
  • After a nominal resistance by the papal forces. - sentence fragment
  • There is a picture in the "History" section that is not appearing - only code. Same in the "Administration" section.
  • Tell the reader who Marconi is - not everyone knows, sadly.
  • For FA, you will need to prune the external links.
  • What about a section on Vatican City's architecture? Perhaps something on that could be included in the culture section? I would also like to see an expansion of that section.

Nice work. Awadewit 09:54, 11 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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